Thursday, December 20, 2012

Obama/Boehner Two-Step

Obama/Boehner Two-Step

by Stephen Lendman

Previous articles explained fiscal cliff duplicity in detail. At issue is destroying America's social contract. Both parties agreed early in Obama's first term. They plan killing it incrementally by a 1,000 cuts.

Obama/Boehner's grand bargain assures new cuts. Obama's on record favoring lower corporate taxes. Expect nominal reductions from today top 35% rate to 28%. What's paid, of course, is much less.

Sometime next year, major tax code revisions will be quietly announced. Discussions about them are concealed. Otherwise, major social benefit cuts would look like double-dealing duplicity to fund corporate largese. More on what's coming below.

Wolff said US taxes over the last half century saw "a massive double (burden) shift from the richest individuals to everyone else."

It's not going broke. When properly administered, it's sound and secure. Over time, it needs only modest adjustments. Doing so properly keeps it viable in perpetuity.

Medicare is America's largest health insurance program. Tens of millions are covered. Everyone over 65 and some younger disabled people qualify. So do others of all ages with end-stage renal disease.

Obama/Boehner/complicit congressional leaders/and corporate America want both programs privatized and eroded en route to ending them in their present form. They want Medicaid and public pensions treated the same way.

Death by a 1,000 cuts is policy. Expect it to play out over the next decade.

Both parties support class warfare. They want people most in need denied help. They want government reduced to militarism, national defense, homeland security, and defending corporate and super-rich privileges.

They want everyone else spurned, on their own, sink or swim. At issue is destroying America's social contract by neoliberal austerity.

Democrats feign resistance. It's cover for what they agreed on years ago. Obama's fully on board. He's corporate America's point man.

His people-friendly persona masks his diabolical dark side. No pun intended. He's contemptuous of popular needs. He heads the fight to destroy them.

Battle lines are drawn. Ordinary people are in the crosshairs. Political theater conceals what's coming.

Both sides agreed on $4 trillion in largely domestic cuts over the next decade. It's for starters. Quietly they're on board for much more.

Retirees will pay higher healthcare premiums and co-pays. Overall benefits will be cut. Promises made were broken. Neoliberal harshness targets them like other Americans. Even wounded and disabled vets increasingly are on their own.

"Broadening the tax base" is code language for major code revisions coming. Ordinary people will be hit hardest.

Expect mortgage deduction caps, state and local tax deduction limits, less allowed for charitable and medical insurance deductions, lower education credits, raising the Social Security retirement age to 67 or higher, and other ways to squeeze America's middle class and least advantaged.

Obama and Boehner feign negotiations. They're on board in principle. Public two-stepping is deceptive. Deal parameters and terms were agreed on long ago.

Corporate bosses are on board. Obama's been meeting with them multiple times weekly. Tax relief, greater handouts, and other incentives bought their support. What they back becomes policy.

On December 19, Time magazine added another award. Obama became its person of the year for the second time. It called him "both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America."

It omitted saying he helped make it unsafe and unfit to live in.

It ignored his war on humanity, his police state governance, his kill list, his self-appointment as judge, jury and executioner, and his self-designating himself power to have any US citizen arrested and imprisoned uncharged indefinitely for life.

It forgot about numerous other violations of international, US statute and constitutional laws. So many exist, it's hard remembering them all. Instead of denouncing his rogue governance, it praised what causes so much harm to so many.

It shouldn't surprise. In 1938, Time named Hitler person of the year. In 1939, Stalin followed. Future Nazi collaborator Pierre Laval won in 1931. So did Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh in 1927.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book is titled "Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.